The Song of Despair
by erlkid
Summary: I know the song these lonely creatures sing. -[An account from a deckhand on a whaling trawler, discovered in his locker following a shipboard incident.]


I know the song these lonely creatures sing.

Already the leviathan, still living, is held aloft in the gear of this imposing vessel, the brand upon its skin so much like my own. We hound it with harpoons, the larger trawler supported by smaller, swifter vessels. The whale must feel as men do when the plague rats come upon them and they are gnawed to the very bones by skittering, chattering creatures so much smaller than they. When the work is done, the whale is lofted into the rigging, there to stay for the voyage to Dunwall.

I know the song. The song is one of absolute despair, of the creature who knows it is absolutely alone. Never to know the companionship of another, condemned to a short and bitter life without hope henceforth.

I know this song because it is the song I sing myself, here with the salt taste in my mouth, battered now by the winds and then by the seas. Wet through to my bones every single day, slipping and sliding on the ever-slick deck, choked by the fumes, worn out and weary with the endless work.

As they hang, trussed to bleed and die, the whales sing of better days. They sing of life in the oceans, of the freedom held in a boundless blue world. Our world is a swirling scum of chaos on the surface of their haven below. Yet sometimes things come stabbing down from that chaos, spearing like thunderbolts into their tranquillity.

So they are caught, and so they sing.

My world was serenity once. They called me Overseer, clergy in the Abbey of the Everyman whose absolute task it was to save the people of the world from the influence of the unknown, the heretic, and the Outsider.

That influence I feel all around me now. Whalers wake with bone charms clutched in their hands, and the shanties they sing vaunt such magics as the Abbey condemns.

And yet...

And yet do they not live a life more adherent to the Strictures than do the very Overseers? Their gaze wanders not from the oceans, their livestock. Their shanties sing only the truth of their lives. Their hands are always at the tiller, the hook, and their feet are bound to the limits of the deck. They have not the luxury of gluttony, nor the time for the flesh, and in their minds they hold one idea: that to survive, they must kill.

And of the Overseers, who were so virtuous that they cast me from their fold, burning shame upon my face? What of them?

They were clever, in the beginning. To look upon a world of magic and gods and say: No. We are the true path, not because our God is more potent than your own, but because we look upon what they offer and declare that it is not what is good for us. Do we not spend our time teaching our children to say yes, and then praise them as adults for the day they no?

The Abbey was the child outgrowing the parent, saying to their overlords: No more. We are the adults now.

Noble, for a time. Yet a child grown becomes an adult, and the circle repeats.

I have come to suspect that all religions turn sour at their very moment of inception. The mind behind the Seven Strictures meant to protect us from the Outsider, from corruption, to ensure our bodies returned to the Cosmos as nature would intend.

Yet here I find myself, with the mark of my heresy seared upon me, my face half swaddled in leather in such disguise as I can muster. The deckhands say naught, but on the streets my disguise would not last a day. This is my freedom, such as I have it, and all because a single, strict interpretation of the Strictures has turned them sour.

I have learned much of the whaling life. Having no recourse but to take to the seas, I have learned these ropes swiftly, shunting aside the knowledge of the Overseer. No more the sermon, and no more the book. There is only the sea.

So it is that I know the mechanisms by which the great beast is held aloft. I know the route the First Mate will take tonight on his patrol, and I know of the key he carries. It will be no effort to render him unconscious and take that key from him.

By that key I will unlock the mechanisms, and release the whale back into the boundless oceans. The creature is already branded, wounded and weak, singing a song of pain, but if I do not believe it can survive, then what hope is there for myself?

Perhaps the answer lies not in heathenism, and not in the Seven Strictures. Perhaps I can trust to believing the actions I take this night shall in turn determine my fate. Perhaps the things we do in every moment shall someday be repaid to us.

I shall take that as my faith. As the ship rocks and the sea churns, as the leviathan finds its liberty, I shall have hope, and a new song.


End file.
